This
is the opening night paper, originally called ‘Mapping the Terrain’, given at
the Writers Retreat at Santa Casa, Queenscliff, by Philip Harvey on Thursday
the 20th of June 2013, under the aegis of the Carmelite Centre.
ONE:
NOTHING
The
roaring waterfall
is
the Buddha’s golden mouth.
The
mountains in the distance
are
his pure luminous body.
How
many thousands of poems
have
flowed through me tonight!
And
tomorrow I won’t be able
to
repeat even one word.
Su
Tung-P’o (1036-1101)
It
might seem an unusual place to start a retreat about writing the sacred, but if
we are honest we must start with questions about whether it is possible to
write about the sacred. What is sacred? Why do we call it sacred? And how do we
use words to explain the sacred, reveal it? How can we be sure the words we use
will work? How can we know that they won’t be of disservice to the sacred? Or
even desecrate it?
It
may not be of much cheer to some of you to hear that there are those who
believe the sacred cannot be written about. The Chinese philosophy of Tao
speaks in conundrums:
The
tao that can be told
is
not the eternal Tao.
The
name that can be named
is
not the eternal Name.
The
unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming
is the origin
of
all particular things.
Free
from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught
in desire, you see only the manifestations.
Yet
mystery and manifestations
arise
from the same source.
This
source is darkness.
darkness
within darkness.
the
gateway to all understanding.
Lao-Tzu
(6th cent. B.C.)
The
person who has defined the Tao is not the person who has defined the Tao, or
Sacred. The person who speaks does not know, the person who does not speak,
knows. (This is by way of a warm-up joke and no I am not quoting Donald
Rumsfeld.)
Perhaps
at this stage it is time to pack up and go home. If we cannot write about the
sacred then perhaps a cup of tea is in order, or we might sleep on it and have
a dream, or take a long walk on the beach in the morning. And it has to be said
that a cup of tea, or a dream, or a walk on the beach are three ways of dealing
with not writing, or not knowing what to write, or of meditating further on
what to write. I could even observe that in Japan drinking tea was turned into
a ceremony that is bound in with Japanese understanding of the sacred. That in
every culture dreams are recognised as means to the meaning of the sacred. Out
of darkness, as it were. That long walks on the beach occur more than once in
the Gospel stories, and to effect.
However,
it is useful to regard how the Taoist Saying about the person who does not
speak, knows, is written down in words. It is still words that talk of what
words can and cannot say about the sacred. And, of course, if we wish to
communicate meaning or meaning-beyond-meaning to others, if we even want to
start, then words are about the most effective and flexible means at our
disposal.
Words
move, music moves
Only
in time; but that which is only living
Can
only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into
the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,
Can
words or music reach
The
stillness, as a Chinese jar still
Moves
perpetually in its stillness.
(Burnt
Norton, V)
In
our own English language literature one of the outstanding attempts at
addressing this question of writing the sacred is Four Quartets. T.S. Eliot’s
long poem turns over in its mind just how do we say what we want to say so it
works. How do we say in symbols something that will always be more than
symbols. The poem itself is a complete essay in how we can and cannot speak of
the sacred. We smile when Eliot admits
That
was a way of putting it -- not very satisfactory:
A
periphrastic study in a worn-out poetical fashion,
Leaving
one still with the intolerable wrestle
With
words and meanings.
(East
Coker, II)
The
admission is part of the artistry, part of the effort of getting near as we can
to a representation of our deepest knowledge. It is not so much an admission of
defeat as a recognition of the limits of possibility. It is saying that we are
in here amidst language and if that’s how it is, let’s get it close as we can
to true and perfect and good and beautiful.
TWO:
REVELATION
When
the words ‘sacred’ and ‘writing’ are used together our first thought can be, oh
we’re talking about Revelation. Sacred writing in our society means the Bible,
the Qu’ran, the Bhagavad-Gita, and other products of ancient religion. (I use
the word ‘ancient’ advisedly as the claims on this writing are that it remains
true then, now, and forever.) These are the
revelation, the revealed actions of God written down for the generations; they
are the foundations of religious tradition.
Although
we cannot add a word of our own to the canon itself, many of us spend our whole
lives adding our words to those of all others who have ever responded to
scripture. It goes on every day –commentary, meditation, lectio divina,
theology, rock songs – and is not restricted to religious writing but to any
literary endeavour. In fact our writing, our written culture, is bound up with
Revelation. We each have a relationship to Revelation that, especially if we
write, we need to be conscious of. We need to be wise in our understanding of
Wisdom. Here now are three observations about Revelation that I hope will be
helpful when you work on your own writing.
1.
In
the story of Doubting Thomas, Christ declares after the disciple sees his
wounds and calls him Lord and God: “Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast
believed; blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” The
writer of John’s Gospel wishes to acknowledge the doubts about Revelation,
about the Resurrection in fact, but he also wishes to confront our doubts. We
are Doubting Thomas. He is the test case, but my interest here is in the Gospel
writer himself. John is saying something momentous about Christ, but also about
his own writing. For indeed, blessed are they who have read these words about
Thomas, and yet have believed. Our writing is in the business of confronting
doubts, it is about declaring the truth as we see it, it is about finding a way
of revealing what is most important to us, revealing it even to people we have
never met. This can mean writing out of doubt, and on doubt. It is a call to
write with directness and clarity. It is about showing faith in the writing
itself.
2.
Christian
writing since the close of canon (2nd century) is sometimes called
the Third testament. I would even expand that definition by saying that all
writers live in a post-canonical world in which they have a creative
relationship with Scripture that comes out in their writing, whether they are
Jew or Gentile. William Blake said, “Christianity is Art and not money. Money
is its curse,” and this motto is worth pondering in this context: “Christianity
is Art.” In this sense, everyone here at Queenscliff is part of the writing
experience known as the Third Testament, whatever your own religious
affiliation, or lack thereof. Genesis is a good place to start. When we read
Genesis we find it is actually a whole anthology of stories of origin: the
origin of the universe, the origin of humanity, the origin of consciousness,
the origin of language, the origin of conflict, the origin of a family, the
origin of a nation. When James Joyce in Finnegans Wake calls Genesis
Guinnesses, he is a Dubliner going after the origin and explanation of all
things. When we go into a bookshop in 2013 half the books we see there are
Third Testament Genesis: they constitute an anthology of writes and rewrites of
origins. And this is what we are doing when we write the sacred, incidentally,
we are putting down our own version of origins.
3.
In
fact our relationship to Genesis is the same we have with all the other books
of the Bible. Which leads me to the proposal that the Bible is a Writer’s
Handbook. It is the Revelation of God, which explains why it is so various in
its expressions. It variations are models of how we write the sacred. There is
law and the reasons for law, often told in story rather than statute. There is
wisdom, available through mythic events, sayings, and proverbs. There is
poetry, available in hymn form through the psalms and elsewhere. There is
prophetic utterance, directed to the people for very good reasons and in very
different styles. There are letters and visions, journals and journeys, and
there are the accounts of Incarnation called Gospel. I encourage you to find
books in this work that speak to you, that are instructive fro your way of
writing, as well as for your personal life.
THREE:
VALUE
Whenever
anyone uses the word Sacred they say something about ultimate value, about what
that person values. Not only values, but regards as needing protection, needing
to be forwarded as of greatest importance. In our expression of the sacred we
state value. Whether we express value overtly or covertly, literally or
metaphorically, consciously or unconsciously, in our expression this is a
defining factor. If our means of expression is words then we desire precision,
transparency, and directness.
Often
when we read other people’s words (novels, essays, poems, plays) we reach
connection at those times when we can judge what it is they reveal that they
prize, or place as of importance for them. The work then takes on meaning in a
way it would not otherwise. If only some writers had a better idea of what they
held ‘sacred’ the easier it would be for their readers. If we sometimes had a
better idea of our own ultimate values, of what we treat as ‘sacred’, it would
help clarify what we are trying to write.
It
is a helpful exercise anyway to sit aside and write down in basic words what it
is we value, then meditate on them. Is this what we want to say? Is this the
expectation I am living up to in my own writing? It is a helpful exercise,
though it is not a promise that anything will then instantly happen in words.
Certainly
there are kinds of writing that begin consciously as an exercise in writing the
sacred in this sense. In theology we have apologetics and the sermon, in poetry
we have the elegy and the ode, in fiction we have moral tales. These are overt
presentations of value. But then we have covert forms, such as parables and
koans and fables. Much of the time though we do not start with a definition of
what we value, but with the whole complex mess with which we are faced. Maybe
our belief in the sacred is under attack, or has even been destroyed – the
writing is acting to re-establish meaning. Often our compulsion to write is
driven by needs we cannot explain, don’t even want to explain for fear of
losing the drive. What is sacred to us is somewhere there, but is not the
immediate cause of concern. I suppose the important factor here is to remember,
what is important to you in your writing? What is the focus? What is
the subject of your work? That is, what is the real subject? It may be
the main focus of attention, way down in the mix, or even barely apparent even
to the author, but to ask the questions (What do I value? What to me is
sacred?) is to bring your attention back to the direction of the writing.
Each
of us writes differently, different styles and different objectives, so there
can be no simple guidelines for writing about he sacred in this sense. What I
am talking about is a state of mindfulness. It is about developing the ability
to assess and reassess what you are doing in your writing. Are there rules for
writing about what we value? I doubt t. There are only ways of getting it right
according to our abilities, ways of improving our expression, ways of being
more objective about ourselves and our world.
FOUR:
WRITING
Here are some
definitions of writing that are not found in the dictionary:
Writing
is the gathering of our language and our wits into a cause.
Writing
is not neutral in its intentions, is not a text or document of letterings, but
comes carrying freight, it carries weight and meaning and purpose and effect.
Writing
is something we learn at school and some of us go on learning for the rest of
our lives.
Writing
abounds as our thinking abounds, as our breathing expands and contracts, as our
body moves and stays.
Writing
employs grounded clunky words to fly through the air like a dancer.
Writing
goes into places you wouldn’t read about.
Writing
enlivens words every day, affirms words and can make new even the oldest words
in our vocabulary.
Writing
wants to stop time while being itself a product of time.
Writing
involves people who spend half a lifetime writing a book that no one reads and
people who spend one day writing something that is read by everyone generation
after generation; and vice versa, involves people who spend half a lifetime
writing something everyone reads and someone who spent a day writing something
that no one will ever read.
Writing
makes the mark you hope you will never wish to cross out.
Writing
usually knows how to start, almost invariably has to figure out how to
continue, and sometimes doesn’t know how to stop.
Writing
is the voice by another means.
Writing
is a rational way of going beyond the rational.
Writing
deals in transparency, objectification, reason, logic and singularity, but with
equal facility deals with contradiction, paradox, incompatibility,
inexplicableness and plurality, sometimes on the same page.
Writing
uses tangible elements to present intangible realities.
Writing
is sometimes the only way out, sometimes the only way in.
Writing
is created in the light and we wish writing acknowledged this more often than
it does.
FIVE:
MYSTERY
The
Fruits of the Sermon
So
having read the Gospel, there and then
that
good and learned father plonked his rear
against
the altarpiece, and – crystal-clear –
explained
the mysteries of faith to men;
oh
yes, expounded on them inside out,
and
every which way told us what they are,
and
gave us explanations, more by far
than
hundreds, to address our every doubt.
He
cited parables, an awful lot,
and
gave interpretations, reams and reams,
just
like a Casamia for your dreams.
In
short, and from this sermon that we got,
to
sum it up, to say it how it is,
it
seems that mysteries are mysteries.
Giuseppe
Gioacchino Belli’s poem is a satire of church-going in Rome in the 19th
century. We all know what it is like to hear the same sermon until it has lost
all impact and meaning. The teachings of the church, like other things, can
become tiresome simply through overfamiliarity. But his sonnet also contains
useful warnings, because undoubtedly a concern of anyone writing the sacred is
Mystery. We are necessarily dealing with mysteries, things we may know full
well, we think we know them full well, but that are Mysteries.
One
warning is that even the most amazing inspirations can be turned into
platitudes by overuse, or by giving the impression that we are just telling the
old, old story, without adding anything new. Our challenge is to convert the
familiar into the amazing, to make it new.
Another
warning from the Rome poet is that mysteries left simply as conundrums are
well-nigh useless. If all we are left with are paradoxes, a great stack of
words, then we have not succeeded, even in describing mystery. We appear to
take it all for granted, just like the priest in the poem, and it seems the
poet too. Whereas we are being told to write with a sense of occasion, to
present without embellishment or endless talk but sparingly and tellingly, with
results that make the reader know this is crucial.
A
third warning is that we can risk explaining it away, we can make what is
sacred so mundane that we lose all interest and betray the very things we
privilege most fully.
So
where do we begin, with Mystery? Here is a Christmas sermon from Saint Ambrose
Bishop of Milan (4th century):
“Falling
down, the Magi adore him, call him king, and profess that he shall rise from
the dead; and this they do by offering him from their treasures, gold,
frankincense, and myrrh.
“What
are these gifts, offered in true faith? Gold, as to a king; incense, as to God;
myrrh, for the dead. For one is the token of the dignity of a king; the other
the symbol of the divine majesty; the third is a service of honour to a Body
that is to be buried, which does not destroy the body of the dead but preserves
it.”
Mystery,
it seems to me, is meaning. Meaning itself is the mystery that is revealed to
us. This is why the congregation in Belli’s poem leaves the church empty,
hungry and none the wiser. In our writing we strive to elucidate meaning and
present it to the reader. Saint Ambrose tells us enough to leave his listener
with everything necessary; to tell us anything more would be to spoil and
confuse the effect. When we encounter epiphanies their meaning shows forth
through the exact choice of words and images. We don’t know how many wise men
there were or how many presents they took the child; in the context of the
story that we do have, what is important is that they went and they saw. Their
gifts as recorded are a response to the very much greater gift that has been
given to them.
Likewise
when we read parables, poems, and other writings where explicit sense serves to
engender manifold implicit effects, the meanings move through us. These are
words intended to be carried everywhere, long after their initial impact. Each
of us works with this Mystery, we each have our own mysteries that we wish to
travel with, visit, and give attention. We know they are only small before the
Mystery itself that we would like to show forth, yet we know we must do this
thing. Over this weekend you will want to spend time dwelling on your own
mysteries. You may wish to write these down, with the intention of returning to
them and writing about them, in depth, at length, over and over until it’s
right.
SIX:
SELF
Two
For Charles Lloyd
(I)
The
sound of flute,
That
purest of instruments,
Close
to breath,
Close
to wind in the leaves.
Voice
of solitude.
Voice
of insomnia.
Call
of a night bird.
Continuous
prayer.
The
instrument of
Lone
shepherds
Sitting
cross-legged
Nomads
setting out in their caravans
Under
a sky full of stars.
The
mystery of this moment.
That
sudden realization
That
we have a soul.
This
is the first of two poems by the American poet Charles Simic dedicated to the
jazz saxophonist Charles Lloyd. “That sudden realization that we have a soul.”
The Self is integral to our writing of the sacred. I expect that this weekend
the Self will come in for a fair amount of scrutiny, a fair amount of
expression, and possibly a fair amount of avoidance as well as confrontation.
The Self in relationship to others and to the Other is a preoccupation of our
lives and essential to our development as human beings. Whether we are totally
captive to the psychologist’s construct of existence, or not, we live with
growing self-knowledge, or perhaps not at all, and self-knowledge is a lead to
other knowledge about the activities of our universe. I offer here seven
elements worth considering when we write of the sacred in relation to the Self.
1.
The
first of these is Quest. Our lives require understanding. Our lives desire
understanding, our lives, and those around us. Our writing is means to present
understanding, as any word of language has potential. In writing, as in our
lives, this often means quest. Quest is the start of questions. Quest
necessarily has before and after. What is before and after for us? Quest knows
that it is searching, asking, testing, distinguishing. Quest is closely related
to journey and pilgrimage. Our life as journey has an honoured place in our
society. It is from this perception of our lives that we may write of all those
things that teach and improve and enlighten. Pilgrimage is the ordered form of
a journey, with an ultimate objective, that assists in placing our lives
meaningfully on Earth. Writing itself can be journey and pilgrimage, if we
adopt this conscious awareness.
2.
The
second is Belief. Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland gives us this
conversation. "Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said;
"one can't believe impossible things." "I daresay you haven't
had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did
it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six
impossible things before breakfast." Each one of us, if we went far
enough, would find that we believe possible and impossible things. Everybody’s
writing is an example of this claim, and a model. Our writing expresses our
beliefs, even if we say we have none. It is as well to remember that we expect
our reader to give credence to what we write. Our beliefs can but inform our
sacred writing and I like Italo Calvino: “I think that this bond between the
formal choices of literary composition and the need for a cosmological model
(or else for a general mythological framework) is present even in those authors
who do not explicitly declare it.” (Memos for the Next Millennium, p.69)
3.
Religion
gave us the word sacred, but where it goes from there is anybody’s
business. Trauma has been identified since ancient times as a prime
cause of behaviour and a major clue to the sacred. Today in psychotherapy (and
our writing is psychotherapy) the trauma or wound operates at some level in us,
driving and informing the words. It’s not all bad, though. Indeed, Memory
itself, the fountain of writing (i.e.
fontes, the origin and font), and of all we do in a learnt way, sorts out
trauma, our own and others, helping us to grow and change. To be conscious, but
not over-conscious, of Memory is a lead into sacred writing. This works in at
least the three following ways:
4.
Impossibility.
Much writing that we read every day is about what is real and possible. The
writing exists to describe and enliven for the reader that which is possible.
Writing about the sacred, on the other hand, often has no choice but to try and
do the impossible. It is in search of ways of describing and enlivening that
which it may be impossible to describe and enliven for the reader.
5.
Restoration.
We are, at the most basic level, in the business of gathering our thoughts
together. But writing is more than that, it is a restoration of what was
already there. Each of us has our own style, our idiosyncrasies and felicities,
our weaknesses and even our faults in writing, but each of us is drawing from experience
and restoring it to the page. One of the most extraordinary examples of this in
literature is Marcel Proust’s long series of novels of remembrance, that are
not history or memoir or criticism or sociology, but an imaginative restoration
of his world. Those of us who have read his early episodes in childhood at
Combray recognise that he is evoking sacred scenes. And you can be writing out
sacred scenes of memory, restoring lost time in a new way.
6.
Enjoyment.
The only words I will use for joy are these. “You never enjoy the world aright,
till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the
heavens, and crowned with the stars: and perceive yourself to be the sole heir
of the whole world, and more than so, because men are in it who are every one
sole heirs as well as you.” (Thomas Traherne, Centuries of Meditations)
7.
Breath,
as heard in the flute of the poem, is the life-giving force that also leads us
where we go. Breath is the Spirit that is breathed on us and that we breathe on
others. Which leads into the conclusion of my words on Self,. Here is the
second of the two poems by Charles Simic to his jazz hero Charles Lloyd. When I
hear this poem it reminds me that writing, like musicianship, is an individual
endeavour as well as a shared experience. We can be alone in our making, but we
are part of the main, we live amongst others. We give to others. The self is in
relation with another. The final lines of this poem are a deliberate quote from
Friedrich Nietzsche, most famous for saying “God is dead, we have killed him --
you and I.” But the Nietzsche saying in the Simic poem comes much closer to a
shared understanding amongst human beings of what we mean by the sacred:
“Without music, life would be a mistake.”
Two
For Charles Lloyd
(II)
Late
night talk
On
a tenor
With
the dead
And
the shadows they cast.
Memories
of dark cities,
Rain-slicked
streets,
After-hour
clubs
With
steep stairwells,
The
thrum of bass and drum.
Company
of phantoms,
Bebop
greats
On
the band stand
The
one in shimmering evening gown
Stepping
down.
“Sweet
Georgia.”
I
hear someone whispering,
“Without
this music,
Life
would be a mistake.”
SEVEN:
PRAYER
Our
writing is directed to someone. The metaphor of the lighthouse may be useful in
this context. Our writing may simply be to ourselves, our ideal self, or the
self that keeps asking questions, the self that wants to write something, just
to inscribe a sentence. Usually our writing is directed at a readership, small
or large, and we learn to compose our paragraphs according to that small or
large audience. Sometimes we don’t even know who the audience may be, but we
want the words to reach them and write in hope that the words will reach them,
some time, tomorrow, next year, next century. Our writing is directed outward
from the page (even the computer is just a blank page). Outward, for other eyes
to read, other ears to hear. We utilise whatever writing skills and devices we
have to that end.
This
is by way of preamble to another kind of writing that is not outward in this
way, that is not written to impress or persuade anyone as a reader. It is an
activity at the heart of the sacred. The sort of writing I am talking about has
at its centre what is universally known as prayer. In its written forms prayer
can include confessions, proclamations, witnesses, intercessions, imprecations,
praise, adorations, and other forms of prayer life that are inward and directed
first and last to God. If you have a word that can improve on God, then that is
the word.
Some
would say the entire literature of the sacred comes out of and returns into the
life of prayer. Some would say that prayer is the actual state out of which our
writing originates, even if its subjects are not always sacred, because prayer
itself is the state of absolute attention on the subject. Prayer is complete
attention.
Prayer
itself is not a literary form. Although prayers, especially in devotions or
liturgy, are constructed according to a form when composed, prayer itself is
not an imaginative act in the same way as all the other constructed forms of
writing we have been hearing about tonight.
One
last awareness that we can keep in mind throughout the weekend and beyond is
that writing can be a form of prayer.
Other
thoughts on the composition of prayer I leave with you, for discussion. Likewise
the other human forms of writerly expression of the sacred set down here
tonight.
SOURCES
Belli,
Giuseppe Gioacchino ‘Er frutto de la
predica = The Fruits of the Sermon”, in Sonnets, trans. by Mike Stocks.
Oneworld, 2007, p. 81
Calvino,
Italo Six memos for the next
millennium. Penguin, 2009
Eliot,
T. S. Four Quartets. Faber, 1944
Lao-Tzu ‘The tao that can be told’, in The
enlightened heart : an anthology of sacred poetry, ed. by Stephen Mitchell.
Harper, 1989, p. 12
Simic,
Charles ‘Two for Charles Lloyd’, in the
liner notes for Rabo de Nube, by the Charles Lloyd Quartet, ECM 2053, 2007
Su
Tung-P’o ‘The roaring waterfall’, in The
enlightened heart : an anthology of sacred poetry, ed. by Stephen Mitchell.
Harper, 1989, p. 41